Dyson, along with a separate consortium of manufacturers led by Airbus, is expecting the government to give it the green light to start making up to 30,000 medical ventilators from next week, after finalising plans to supply thousands of devices to help the NHS fight Covid-19.

The proposals differ, with the Airbus-led Ventilator Challenge UK consortium planning to scale up production of existing models and also expected to win backing from Westminster.

Dyson said it had received orders for 10,000 ventilators it aims to build from scratch, and released pictures and specifications of its CoVent prototype on Wednesday night.

In a letter to staff the company’s billionaire founder, Sir James Dyson, said the “race is now on to get it into production”. He promised to donate 5,000 machines to the international effort to treat Covid-19 patients, with 1,000 of the devices pledged to the UK.

The government, which wants to increase the number of ventilators in the NHS from 8,175 to 30,000, has been considering which option to choose – but now looks likely to press ahead with both.

A decision is expected on Wednesday ahead of a massive production effort, reminiscent of UK industry’s role in producing Spitfire planes during the second world war.

In the meantime, the government has placed multimillion-pound orders with specialist suppliers that can provide a small number of ventilators to start addressing the shortfall swiftly. These include Crawley-based Inspiration Healthcare, which said in a statement to investors it had taken more than £5m in orders from the NHS.

The Ventilator Challenge UK consortium’s plan will work to designs already made by Smiths Medical, from Luton, and Penlon, based in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

While these two firms are unable to produce the required number of ventilators on their own, they can draw on the facilities of other members of the consortium, including the engineering firms GKN and Meggitt, and the automotive company McLaren.

Dyson has been working on a completely new model of ventilator with The Technology Partnership, a Cambridge-based group of science and innovation companies with expertise in medical equipment.

Work is going on at Dyson’s Hullavington laboratory in Wiltshire, where it was designing an electric car until the plan was abandoned last year. Dyson believes it can meet the government’s requirements by deploying knowledge in areas where there is some crossover between its products and ventilators. These include digital motors, battery packs, expertise in airflow, and HEPA filters, which block fine particles but not air.

Sources familiar with the two schemes said they were in a position to start work but have been waiting on the government to give its blessing to one or both of the projects. The government is expected to provide further details on Thursday.

The wide-ranging collaboration between the government and the UK’s industrial powerhouses is being coordinated by three government departments, alongside the High Value Manufacturing Catapult, a research and development organisation.

The Cabinet Office is managing procurement of the machines under the oversight of the chief commercial officer, Gareth Rhys Williams, while the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is fielding offers of help from UK companies.

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHCS) is responsible for vetting the types of ventilator that could be built, and has drawn up a list of specifications that were sent out to companies hoping to build one from scratch.

The government is also exploring other sources of ventilators to plug the gap until larger production volumes come on-stream.

Inspiration Healthcare’s chief executive, Neil Campbell, said: “I’m delighted that Inspiration Healthcare has been able to benefit from our commercial relationships with critical care equipment manufacturers and source such large quantities of this very specialist equipment, working closely with the DHSC to find solutions during this difficult time.

“Inspiration Healthcare’s senior directors as well as our teams working all over the UK have played a key role in securing these supplies, which in total are considerably larger than we have ever received in the past.”